WEBPOINTERS : ON-LINE BASEBALL SEASON IN FULL SWING.Byline: Glenn Gamboa Knight-Ridder Tribune News Wire Across the country, they are working on their starting lineups For the line of action figures, see . A starting lineup in sports refers to the set of players actively participating in the event when the game begins. The players in the starting lineup are commonly referred to as starters, whereas the others are substitutes . They are agonizing over the last-minute changes, contemplating trades and technical roster moves. They are getting ready now that the new baseball season has opened. No, not the dozens of managers and front-office personnel of Major League Baseball "MLB" and "Major Leagues" redirect here. For other uses, see MLB (disambiguation) and Major Leagues (disambiguation). Major League Baseball (MLB) is the highest level of play in North American professional baseball. teams. This is the season that Fantasy Baseball Fantasy baseball is a game whereby players manage imaginary baseball teams based on the real-life performance of baseball players, and compete against one another using those players' statistics to score points. rotisserie team owners across the country have been waiting for all winter long. And, because of the Internet, thousands more are able to join in the fantasy. ``This caters to the people who like baseball and like the idea of fantasy baseball, but don't have three or four friends that they can create a league with,'' said Charlie Wiegert, vice president of CDM 1. CDM - Content Data Model 2. CDM - Code Division Multiplexing Fantasy Sports, a St. Louis-based company that runs the Fantasy Baseball Interactive site. ``Now, a guy on a farm in the middle of Nebraska can enjoy the game just as much as a guy in the heart of New York City New York City: see New York, city. New York City City (pop., 2000: 8,008,278), southeastern New York, at the mouth of the Hudson River. The largest city in the U.S. .'' CDM's on-line fantasy baseball site (http://www.cdmnet.com/fsi/baseball) caters to about 5,000 owners who pay at least $39 a season to enter a pennant Pennant A continuation pattern in technical analysis formed when there is a large movement in a stock, the flagpole, followed by a consolidation period with converging trendlines, the pennant, followed by a breakout movement in the same direction as the initial large movement, the race run in conjunction with the Sporting News. Players pay small fees to make most transactions and add players to their roster. Wiegert said players enjoy the increased competition and the impartial third party running the league. ``A lot of guys get tired of all the funny trades and feel better when someone else is calling the shots,'' he said. And on-line, owners can change their rosters twice a week, and standings are updated twice a week. But more and more companies have seen the allure of running Internet-based fantasy baseball leagues. Both ESPNet Sportszone (http:// espnet.sportszone.com) and Sportsline (http:// www.sportsline.com) offer leagues in baseball along with their constantly updated sports news that start with a $29.95 membership fee. But rotisserie isn't just for baseball anymore. Using the same concept, you can now develop pretend teams in hockey (http:// www.icepicks.com), auto racing (http:// www.fantasynascar.com), even golf (http:// www.worldgolf.com). Fantasy sports play on the Internet has succeeded so much that ESPNet and Sportsline already offer leagues in various sports. For example, ESPNet's recent NCAA basketball This article is about the Nintendo game. For the collegiate sport, see College basketball. NCAA Basketball (known as World League Basketball pool recently drew 176,476 entries. CDM offers leagues in football, basketball, hockey and golf that are joined by nearly 20,000 people each year. ``It's been extremely popular,'' said ESPN ESPN Entertainment and Sports Programming Network spokesman Vinny Vassallo. ``The combination of the technology that Starwave provides and the statistics ESPN is able to generate, it is a natural fit.'' ESPNet's fantasy leagues generate traffic for the site; they offer people who visit the site a way to enter a fantasy league and they also create another revenue stream for the site. |
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